Life Support
by Writtenhouse
Summary: What would it take to make the decision to live if everything you ever wanted is already gone? Gabby must choose, but which door will she take?


**_Someone requested another Dawsey oneshot, so here ya go._**

 ** _But first, I gotta thank you guys for all the reviews on my other stories! It's so great that you guys like them. (lol somebody said my Post-4x23 Chicago PD story was better than the actual ending…why do you think I wrote it? That ending sucked!)_**

And please don't be offended if I get the medical jargon wrong, I know literally nothing about that kind of thing. Sorry.

Story now.

"Is this the place?" Gabby asked. Matt nodded. "It's nice." Gabby said, smiling. Matt smiled back.

"Yeah, well, enjoy it, cause it only took me two hours to get a reservation—kidding!" Matt said when he saw Gabby's look.

They had been wanting a night out to themselves for a while, but life had just kept getting in the way. First the mess with Louie's biological father, then the whole warehouse fire fiasco, and just recently the psychopath rock thrower who attempted to cause the ambulance to crash. The point was, they hadn't had the chance for a real dinner date in a while.

Until tonight. Matt pulled up to the curb and put the car in park. He hopped out and went to open the door for Gabby. She stepped out, flashing him that gorgeous smile of hers. Matt's heart melted. Once again, he wondered how on earth he, Matt Casey, had ended up married to the most beautiful, amazing woman alive.

"Ready?" Gabby asked him. Matt managed to turn his focus to walking instead of staring into Gabby's eyes.

"Let's go." He said.

Gabby followed Matt through the doors of the restaurant. As she walked over the threshold, though, her shoe caught on the step and the strap popped open. Cursing under her breath, she bent down to fix it. Matt continued walking, not noticing.

Just as Gabby was about to straighten up and follow Matt, something under one of the tables caught her eye.

Her vision tunneled on the tiny amount of movement, unnoticeable to most people but glaringly obvious to her, a paramedic and the sister of a cop.

"Matt get down!"

Bang!

"Female, 25, head trauma, multiple burns and lacerations, trouble breathing."

"Male, 27, severe head trauma, third-degree burns, severe bleeding, not breathing on his own."

"What happened?"

"Restaurant bombing, and there's more victims on their way. You guys are gonna have a rough night."

Matt stood up and looked around. What happened? Where was he? Where was Gabby? He remembered something about a restaurant, and Gabby yelling something. He had turned around, and...that was all he remembered.

Matt seemed to be in a stark-white room. It was completely bare of any furniture, or anything at all, except...

There were two doors in the wall. They were completely identical in appearance. Matt hesitated. Which one should he choose? More importantly, which one would lead him to Gabby?

Matt walked up to the first door. He put his hand on it, feeling it. He put his ear up against it. He could hear voices behind it, but he couldn't make out what they were saying. Nor did he particularly care. None of the voices belonged to Gabby.

Matt turned to the other door. There were no voices behind this one; it was completely silent. But the instant he touched it, he felt a burning and irrepressible curiosity to know what lay on the other side.

The silent door felt...different. There seemed to be some sort of energy to it, like it was alive. Or at least what was on the other side of it was. Matt reached for the handle.

"He's crashing!"

"Clear!"

"It's not working!"

"Clear!"

But something stopped him. The voices from behind the other door grew louder. He still couldn't tell what they were saying, but they sounded frantic.

Matt put his ear to the door. He strained his hearing, but the one voice, the one person on earth who could have convinced him to go through that door, he didn't hear.

Gabby. He didn't hear Gabby.

Matt put his hand on the handle of the silent door. The pull became stronger, more solid, as if he was standing in the water as the tide was going out.

Matt opened the silent door.

And the voices from the other door ceased, as he was enveloped in silence.

"He's gone. We lost him."

"Time of death?"

"4:03 AM."

Something was drastically wrong. Gabby didn't know what it was, but something was horribly, indisputably wrong.

Everything was completely dark, and her body felt like it was on fire. But that wasn't what felt so wrong; it was something else. Something much, much worse.

Matt.

Where was Matt?

All of a sudden it hit her like a ton of bricks. Her mind exploded with memories. The restaurant. The bomb. The flash of light, and being thrown backwards, and Matt...

Matt was gone.

Riiiiiiiiiinnnnng! Riiiiiiiiiinnnnng!

Kelly Severide groaned. Who the heck would call him at six in the morning?

"I'm coming, I'm coming." He said grumpily. He picked up his phone and checked the caller ID. He frowned. It readNow why would the hospital be calling him?

"Kelly Severide, who's calling?" He answered.

Five minutes later he was rushing out the door, keys in hand. He was still trying to process the information, but he knew one thing; he had to get to the hospital.

Severide made a beeline for the small crowd of Firehouse 51 crew gathered in front of one of the rooms in the trauma center.

Everyone had sort of a shocked, fearful expression on their face. Severide looked through the glass into the room.

Gabby lay in the bed, almost unrecognizable due to the amount of tubes and wires attached to her. Several doctors and nurses were rushing around, constantly checking machines and shouting about something that wasn't going right.

Severide turned to his friends.

"What happened? They said there was a bombing? Where's Matt?"

Severide suddenly found himself the recipient of everyone's blank stares.

"Guys?" Severide asked.

Stella was the one to break the silence.

"Kelly..." she said. "Matt...didn't make it."

Gabby didn't want to be here. She didn't want to be stuck in this horrible darkness without sight or sound. Only pain.

Especially the pain in her heart. That was the worst. Because Matt was gone.

Gabby just wanted to let go.

She just wanted to die.

"It's hard to explain," the nurse said, "Gabriela was fairly stable until around four this morning; after that she just went downhill fast. It's like she completely lost the will to live. Her body is actually refusing to breathe." The nurse sighed.

"I hate to have to tell you this, but it doesn't look good. She might not make it."

Gabby could choose to just let go; she could. She would.

She determined right then to just stop breathing. She would just quit, breathe out and never breathe back in.

But she couldn't. Every breath, every painful breath, was being dragged out of her. However hard she tried to stop, air continued to be forced into her lungs.

"Come on, come on!"

"We're losing her!"

A light invaded the darkness. Gabby blinked a few times, then slowly looked around. She was in a white room, completely bare except for two doors.

The first door, she could hear voices behind. She didn't pay much attention to the voices. None of them were Matt's.

Behind the second door there were no voices. Behind the second door there was only silence.

Gabby felt a pull towards the second door. Something unexplainable deep inside her told her that Matt had taken that door.

Her breath hitched in her throat as she reached for the handle of the second door. She tried to push it down, stop breathing completely. But again, she couldn't.

"Gabby."

She turned, tears springing to her eyes at the sound of that voice. Matt's voice.

"Hey." Matt waved to her. He was leaning against the wall of the room, completely relaxed.

"Matt..." Gabby tried to say, but found she couldn't speak. Her voice refused to work.

"Shhh." Matt put a finger to his lips as he moved toward Gabby. He moved so easily, exactly like he'd always moved. Gabby's heart ached to think of it.

Suddenly she was hit with a blast of sharp pain. Gabby nearly fell to the ground. Her entire body was on fire with pain. She could hardly think, except her stupid lungs kept breathing.

Matt reached out a hand and wiped tears from Gabby's cheek. She hadn't realized she was crying, but she must have been. She'd never hurt so much in her life.

"Matt..." she tried to speak again, but her voice wouldn't come out.

Matt pulled her into his arms, his lips meeting hers. Gabby would have cried out if she could have, her heart ached so badly. The kiss felt exactly as it would have if they were both healthy, and awake.

If they were both alive.

Gabby closed her eyes. She wanted to enjoy this moment to the fullest for as long as it lasted. She tried to push the thought that it might be the last moment out of her mind.

What was Matt doing?

He breathed gently into Gabby's lungs, filling them with air. Again and again he did this. And every time, with every breath, a little bit of the pain flew away.

Gabby could feel herself slipping, getting farther and farther away. Matt's hand guided hers down, down, until it met the door handle.

Gabby's eyes snapped open.

It was not the silent door.

The door began to open and Gabby could feel it pulling her, sucking her back into the living world. She grabbed for Matt's hand, tried to pull him through with her, but he was fading away from her, she couldn't reach him.

Matt backed away from Gabby. He was still smiling reassuringly, even though Gabby's heart felt like it was breaking.

Matt blew her one last kiss, just one, and then he faded away completely.

Gabby fell through the door as the noises got louder and louder around her, and the door in front of her shut forever.

She knew nothing but darkness.

And then came the light, the painful, terrible light.

"She's stabilizing! Heart rate's leveling out, breathing coming back up!"

Gabby's eyes snapped open. The blinding white of the hospital room made her blink in shock. Doctors were rushing around her, checking machines.

She looked up and met the eyes of her friends through the glass of her room. And what she saw there confirmed what she already knew; Matt was gone.

Gabby closed her eyes. Matt had convinced her to live; but it was going to be a long road.

CRYING. IM. CRYING.

You guys can cry now.

I'm sorry.

No I'm not.

I just had this idea randomly, and I loved it, so I wrote it!

#DAWSEY!!


End file.
